Digging the hole

It’s been a long two weeks of construction! Our hands and backs haven’t forgiven us yet, but the results are well worth it. I want to thank William, Robert, Brett, and Jay for coming out on a sticky Thursday night to help us rip up the floor. We really didn’t expect to start digging the hole to the sewer main until the next week, but you guys powered through it. We owe you many, many more beers for the effort! Cheers!

We will dig here... ... I think

... and so we begin

must have dug in the correct spot

Check out the Lucid Brewing page on Facebook for more photos!

By the way, I did finish brewing school.

Brewhouse at Hoppy Brewing, Sacramento, CA

Pub at Sierra Nevada Brewing, Chico, CA

What happened to 2009?

Taps at at Fitger’s Brewhouse - Duluth, MN

As one year ends and another begins, things have been quiet as far as the physical brewery goes. 2009 has been a year learning and making new friends.

Lucid Brewing – There’s a new Kid in Town by The Captain’s Chair

A few weeks back I chatted it up with Aaron Masterson of The Captain’s Chair.

Read about our conversation here: Lucid Brewing – There’s a New Kid in Town

Thank you Aaron for the article.

New pilot brewhouse

The order has been placed and the money put down on a new pilot brewhouse. This new brewhouse is still “small,” as its maximum capacity is only 2/3 bbl batches, but since we have not found a brewery location to-date, we are restricted in the pilot brewhouse’s size. On the plus side, this system has pretty much the same features found on a 10 to 30 bbl brewhouse. Its controller is at about the same level of complexity as a controller found on a bigger brewhouse, so hopefully the transition to brewing on a bigger brewhouse will be less painful when we find a brewery location in the future.

Now I have to round up some larger fermenters. By round up, I mean, find vessels that can be adapted to fermenter use, since new or used 1 bbl or smaller fermenters are ridiculously priced. I have a few months to work on the fermenters, since the brewhouse will not be ready until late August.

I cannot wait to brew on the new brewhouse.

Going to Brewing School

The letter starts, “I would like to inform you that you have been accepted into the Craft Brewers Apprenticeship Program, beginning January 18th, 2010.” At this point I stopped reading, grabbed a pint glass, and filled it up. The letter continues on how my acceptance is conditional upon the completion of a “Principles of Chemistry” course and upon the receipt of the down payment. The course wraps up the week of June 21st with a residential week in Sacramento, CA, otherwise the course is distance based. Upon completion of the course, I will be apprenticing at a yet-to-be-determined brewery for five weeks.

Next stop, Minnesota State Colleges & Universities for some chemistry. I am not shocked that my accounting degree did not provide all of the necessary background course-work, but it did provide a bunch, so at least no more calculus courses. This course will be quite different than my accounting degree I received from St. Cloud State University. For instance, I will not be pounding Keystone, Busch Light Draft, Special X, Mickeys or other macro-brewed beer this time. Yes, SCSU was prior to my craft-brewed beer “gateway” experience. Also, I no longer attempt to buy the biggest amount of beer for the smallest amount of cash.

A Brewer’s Dream

Welcome to March in Minnesota, this week was another of below zero temps. Yes, the temperature aided in getting me out of my “I have not adjusted to day light savings” tiredness, but I would rather swill the New Belgium version of below zero. I cannot blame all of my tiredness on the time change though. I’ve been having several nights like last night. I did sleep, but I woke up with about five ideas that were spinning through my dreams, which I promptly wrote down this morning. I find it quite weird how some of my best ideas come to me in my sleep. This does not always make for a good night’s rest, but it is neat to be able to have such vivid ideas that can be written down in much detail the following morning.

Now that Lucid Brewing is a member of the Brewers Association, my wife and I will be off to Boston for the Craft Brewers Conference in April. We are both excited for the event. My wife will be exposed to the dreamy world of craft brewing that keeps my mind going most nights. We will be visiting several Boston and New Hampshire breweries/brew pubs while in Boston. During our whirlwind visit we have absolutely no down time to speak of. By the time we are finished with the seminars, the expo, and other events I will have more haze in my head than a fully roused Bavarian weizen.

Progress on the actually brewery has been focused on the owner/brewer, known as me. I applied for brewing school and for a chemistry class. The chemistry class will aid the technical aspects of brewing and will make the yeast think I am not a complete stranger. The brewing school will be intense and may delay the opening of the brewery, but I feel that not going down this path is downright foolish. I applied for a brewer’s certificate program with an internship immediately following the classes. Let’s hope I am accepted to the program.

Oh yeah, progress has been made on the logo. The logo has been the primary focus of my weird dreams at night. Not by choice, it just is. My wife and I have created several sketch ideas and are working on finding a local artist to bring life to it. It is so cool to see all of the different sketches we have come up with. The evolution of our ideas is as interesting as it is demented. We both have come to realize we have a dark side that at times is coming out in our logo.

Lucid Brewing Exists On the Record

The Minnesota Secretary of State Office has officially assigned a charter number to Lucid Brewing, LLC. Most likely the easiest task I will perform with the state during the start-up phase. The charter number allowed me to get a federal employer identification number from the Internal Revenue Service, an even easier task simply performed online. With these items in hand, I spent lunch on Monday at the bank opening up a business checking account. To my surprise the account came with a credit line and a credit card. I guess this is where good credit comes in handy.

The next couple of tasks are to become a member of the Brewers Association and register for the Craft Brewers Conference. These two items open up a large amount of information for start-up breweries. The convention is being held in Boston the third week of April. I look forward to attending as many of the meeting sessions as possible to learn all I can in one week and to make some solid contacts at the brew expo. I know my head will hurt after this week in Boston, not just from all the knowledge I will collect, but also from all the beer I will drink.

The brewery location search has been getting me quite familiar with city zoning maps and with a few of the friendly folks at several city offices. So far nothing fully meets our current criteria, but there are still many sites to review.

Otherwise, the balance of time has been around the business plan, logo design, and research on a pilot brewing system. I will keep you posted as things move along.

Brewing and Research

The past few days have been of fun research and test batch brewing. Friday evening we enjoyed a night of “researching” several tasty beers, served in tiny glasses, at Winterfest. The event was held at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul. All of the breweries and brewpubs of the Minnesota Craft Guild shared their brew to raise money for charity.

We ran into the former president of James Page Brewing, who agreed to take a look at our business plan and promises to tear-it-up real good. I look forward to his professional criticism and advice, so I can hopefully not run into similar pitfalls that he experienced in the start-up of James Page. I’m glad my wife had enough beer in her to forget his wise advice of how to keep a brewery running, “Have a working wife who is willing to keep putting money into it.”

Saturday was a test batch day. An English Northern Brown, which I split in two and pitched a different yeast strain in each half. It was a brewing day of Zen. Everything just went the way it should have and the results turned out better than expected. The plan is to keep the half batch that turns out best clean and funk-up the other half in some experimental manner. I have a few plans of attack, but will wait to see which to choose when the primary fermentation is done and a sample is tasted.

The rest of my time has been spent working on the business plan. Last week I attended a “Starting a Business in Minnesota” class, a free resource to assist business planning sponsored by the Small Business Association (SBA) and the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED). The class was basic, but a great resource for additional contacts for reviewing the business plan. So far this week has been contacting various suppliers to confirm ingredient prices. I was pleasantly surprised with the predicted 2010 hop prices, however my surprise was quickly squelched by the news that English varieties will still be hard to get.

Accountants, Lawyers, gold medal

I met with the tax and legal gurus for their wisdom on what type of entity Lucid Brewing shall be. The choice was basically between a Limited Liability Company (LLC) or S-Corporation. I selected LLC, for now. A LLC gives more options for potential investment situations, like this really matters, since this assumes someone or someones will want to invest in Lucid Brewing. Seriously, I am open to investors, so send them my way, please. Once Lucid Brewing is creating revenue, and under the assumption I have no investors, I will change the company to an S-Corporation. An S-Corp gives an owner more flexibility around income taxes.

This past Friday and Saturday was spent at the Upper Mississippi Mash-Out (see previous post) judging home-brewed beer and consuming large amounts of locally brewed beer, both home-brewed and professionally brewed. All beers were very good. I entered a couple of beers, my Cream Ale took home a gold medal. I will post some of the feedback from the judges when I receive my score-sheets.

This week I am finalizing the LLC paperwork and looking around for potential brewery sites. The equipment search is quite a learning process. It is tough, when looking at a brewhouse, to figure out what is included and what is not included. The business plan has quite a ways to go, but it looks like I will be going with a 15-bbl brewhouse, but a 30-bbl brewhouse in not out of the question.

I look forward to this weekend’s test batch, a Northern English Brown Ale. Nutty, caramel goodness in a bottle.